Scarlet and the Tremaines
by Margo Vizzini-Montoya
Summary: Heroes and Villains get their happy endings. But what about Knaves?


**Scarlet and the Tremaines**

* * *

 **Tagline:** Heroes and Villains get their happy endings. But what about Knaves?

 **Warning:** contains swearing and spoilers for OUAT in Wonderland

 **Author Rant:** Kitsis and Horowitz are fantastic storytellers. However, Will Scarlet totally got screwed over. They had a great story arc for him in OUATiW and he was by far one of its best characters. Which is why I was excited to see that he was brought into OUAT, as long as they explained why his happy ending fell through. _But they didn't_. All we got was him drunk in the library with the Red Queen's picture, and after that his role was the comical plot device. And now since he has been reduced from main cast in Season 5, I highly doubt we will ever know what happened between him and Anastasia - did she revert back to her old ways? die? what?

These burning questions and my frustration with his demotion have prompted the following tale, which is not as bitter sounding as this rant is. Promise.

 **Disclaimer:** so not mine, (obviously)

As always, I hope you enjoy : )

* * *

 _Sometime before the Wicked Trio enter town…_

"What the _hell_ are you doing here?"

So shrilled a waspish voice that was helping his pounding head none.

"I'm drinking me lunch and dinner. Like I do every afternoon. What's it to – "

Will turned in his seat at Granny's counter to see what shrew from his past was going to ruin his day any more than it already was, and that is when he saw her – the woman who had nearly been his monster-in-law. Lady effing Tremaine.

"Oh."

"Yes, 'oh'. Where's my daughter?" she snapped indignantly, as if she had any right to.

If anything, it was that tone of voice and sense of entitlement that got his dander up (and not at all the pain that he associated anytime there was mention of Anastasia), and he snapped back, "In Wonder-bloody-land. More importantly, she's happy, and what must make you happy is that it is not with me."

While the woman spluttered, he downed his very Irish coffee, tossed some bills on the counter to pay his tab, and stormed out with what little dignity he could muster.

If he had stayed there any longer, he might have said something he would really regret, like why Ana was truly happy.

And there was no way in hell he was going to give that harpy the satisfaction of knowing that her daughter had achieved the dream of becoming Queen, not once but twice.

Long live Ana the White.

~0~

After leaving Granny's, he had debated between the remaining two establishments that would allow him to drown in his sorrows – the Rabbit Hole and the Ugly Duckling.

For sentimentality's sake, he had chosen the former.

A pint and a mounting pile of peanuts later, he wished he had chosen the latter. It was seedier and far less likely a place that a Tremaine would deign to track him to.

"Scarlet, you have some explaining to do," was how the other sister greeted him.

He didn't bother turning around or even glancing over when she sat next to him. The bar's mirror reflected her image perfectly.

Drusilla Tremaine looked the same and yet different. She hadn't grown an inch since he and Ana had left the Forest. She was still the same average height, with same slightly curvy figure. She had the same curly dark hair, that was perhaps allowed to be a little more unruly, but it framed the same square face that was so like her sister's with its wide mouth and expressive eyes. Hers were dark brown, and her nose was almost pudgy rather than pert in comparison.

The difference was that although she was dressed in edgy black and had lost the soft pastels, she had also lost the hardness, the driving anger that had so characterized her before. She was softer somehow, sadder. And although her mouth was pursed in a grim line and it looked as if she was determined not to let him leave before she got her answers, she did not look like she was going to scratch out his eyes or unleash a vitriolic diatribe on his weary head.

In light of this, he stayed in his seat and merely greeted blandly, "Dru."

When she didn't answer but simply stared at him expectantly, he pretended to be oblivious and asked innocently, "Or do you prefer to go by your Cursed moniker? 'Margie', was it?"

Her lip curled in the sneer that he remembered, (although it was still less venomous than it had once been).

"'Margie' was short for Marguerite, and while either are better than the ridiculous Disney 'Drizella', which made me sound like a sniffling Godzilla, 'Dru' will do."

He nodded affably and then attempted to take another sip from his beer, but before he could do so, she snatched it from his hands.

"Oy!"

"What. Happened. To. My. Sister?"

He ignored the grief and loss that swirled in the dark depths of her eyes and glared furiously at her, recalling all the times that Ana had come to him with tears in her eyes because of some cruel remark of Lady Tremaine's Mini-Me.

"Why should I tell you? Especially as all you're gonna do is run and tell your mother just like before."

Sometimes, when his mind wandered down What-if Lane, he wondered if Ana would have made the choice she had if her mother had never had the chance for that final confrontation, a chance only made possible by Dru who Ana had written a goodbye letter to.

Ana's older sister grimaced, with pain and regret flickering across her face, but then with fierce determination, she hissed back, "I will never tell that woman anything ever again. She drove my sister away and twisted me into becoming a spiteful hag."

"Oh yeah?" he scoffed. "Last time I checked you two were partners in Boyds' Domestics, forcing your 8-month pregnant stepsister to work as a laundress to earn her keep because she disgraced your family's good name by getting knocked up out of wedlock."

Drusilla's fist clenched and unclenched in frustrated anger. Ana had once told him that this was her tell for when she knew that she needed to duck and cover. He didn't know which he was wary of more – her fist or her other hand which was holding his beer. Horror of horrors, she might throw it in his face.

She did neither. After a deep breath, she kind of sagged against the counter, losing her imperiousness, as she admitted, "You're right. I was a downright bitch. I was so mad at my sister for leaving me alone with _her_ that I wanted to ruin her chance at happiness. And as for Ella, in my defense, I was still under the Curse at the time. Since then, I've gone to Dr. Hopper for counseling. I sold my share of the business, and I am part of the production crew of _Good Morning, Storybrooke_. It's gotten classier since then…"

At his unimpressed snort, she continued, "And while I haven't quite gotten to the point of making amends to Ella, it's not because I don't want to – it's because I don't know _how_ to. Until I do, I think the best thing I can do is leave her in peace."

She then pushed his beer over to him and said, "My mother did leave me a voicemail saying that you told her that Ana was in Wonderland still, and if I have to be satisfied with that, well then, I must. But while I know I wasn't the best of sisters, I did love her."

At the end of her plea, she stood up and began walking towards the door.

He blamed Alice's influence on what he did next.

"Dru?"

When she turned around, he kicked the stool she had been sitting on back out to her and declared with a shrug, "She would want you to know. Perhaps, so that you can learn from her mistakes."

When she sat down, he began his tale, not leaving much out, especially his final moments in that blighted land.

~0~

 _Sometime after Alice's wedding…_

Will walked into Ana's chambers expecting her to be asleep or pouring over some document or other. This is what he usually came back to after doing a security sweep. (There was a surprising number of ways for a thief or an assassin to sneak into the castle, especially since as the White Queen, Ana was refraining from using her more deadly magic to make up for it.)

But this was, of course, not the usual occurrence. And it did not look to be a pleasant surprise, if her handwringing and nervous lip-nibbling was anything to go by.

"What's up, love?"

"Up?" Ana asked quizzically, glancing towards the arched ceilings as if she expected a flying monkey or a dragon to descend from on high.

"It's just an expression," he explained with a shrug, partially in dismissal and partially to get out of his confining 'ivory' (read: easily stained) jacket. "I meant what's on your mind?"

"We need to talk."

"I can see that," he asserted warily, gesturing to her body as it practically vibrated with anxiety.

" _Please_ , Will," she begged, her blue eyes wide and imploring, as she patted the seat next to her on the divan.

He sat down next to her, but every fiber in his being was screaming for him to run away. The last time she had been this intense, she had been fervently making a case to steal the royal jewels. And look how well that had turned out for him.

As soon as he was settled, she grabbed his hand and asked beseechingly, "You know I love you, right?"

"Aye," he agreed hesitantly, not because he doubted her but more so because this was a foreboding start to any conversation. Trying to be reassuring, he squeezed her hand back and asked, "And you know that I love you too?"

"I know," she whispered, almost tearfully, before glancing away to stare at the fire, even as she continued what was starting to sound like a prepared speech.

"And you know that if I could live with myself and leave all this behind, I would, right?" She waved the hand that was holding his tightly to gesture to all the accoutrements of being the last Queen of Wonderland.

"Aye, I do." He acknowledged, and he was quite proud to note – without rancor.

After they had defeated Jafar and Alice and Cyrus had left to pursue their happily-ever-after, the Rabbit had turned to them and offered to take them wherever they wanted. The only place he could think of was Storybrooke, for as far as he knew the Enchanted Forest was gone due to Regina's Curse, and he was not looking forward to explaining that to Ana, when she requested to return home.

But she hadn't asked to return home. She had instead stated that she wanted to stay here, to stay and make up for all the wrongs she had done as the Red Queen, to stabilize the realm at least until a worthy noble rose up from the scattered ranks to take over.

He had been so proud of her. He still was. And he had been so supportive of her endeavor that he had even agreed to be her Prince Consort, when she had earned the people's trust again and had been re-coroneted as the White Queen.

"I'm sensing a 'but' here, love. Please, just rip it off like a Band-Aid."

"I don't particularly get that reference," she noted bemusedly, before taking a deep breath and declaring in rush, "But, okay, here goes: it's-taking-too-long-to-find-a-replacement-and-you're-unhappy-as-this-isn't-the-kind-of-life-you-have-ever-wanted-for-yourself-so-I-don't-think-it's-going-to-work-out."

Well, when she rips it, she rips it. It took him a few minutes to decipher what she said and then to recover from the shock of what seemed to him to be something that was coming from out of nowhere, much less from out of left field.

He tried to keep his cool. He tried to not let his pain of her abandonment from the last time cause him to overreact. He tried to hear her love for him and her desire for him to be happy and not just her rejection of them again. From this he tried to argue and reason with her.

"You're right I am a bit of a wanderer, and being a leader and someone responsible for a whole nation is not really my cup o' tea, and not what I had envisioned for myself on Career Day, but, love," he gripped her hand tighter and with his other he brought her gaze back to his, "I will endure hours of courtier politics and all the rules and regulations that drive my Knavish mind bonkers, if it means that at the end of day I can have these quiet moments with you."

"But, Will! I can't stand it!" she exclaimed as she ironically stood up to make her protest. "It _kills_ me to see you bite your tongue to avoid offending some pompous arse so that it does not cause me problems. You are dying inside every little day, and I won't be the cause of that!"

By the end of her little speech, she had wrapped her arms around her middle as if she was trying to keep herself from being torn apart by pure agony; and while it hurt him to see her like that, he wasn't going to take this sitting down.

He stood up and yelled back, "So what are you proposing to do? That I leave you here and wander the land, making a bloody nuisance of myself like last time?"

"No!" she cried in frustration, and then gentling her tone, she declared, "To go back to your Storybrooke like you planned to when you first came here with Alice."

At the thought of returning alone to that lifeless apartment (if his name was even still on the lease), he strode over to her and gripped her shoulders, almost practically shaking her, as he growled, "Not bloody likely. I am not going to give up on us again. I won't do it."

Tears streaming down her face, she reached up and kissed him softly. Her lips barely grazed his, but the contact made him lightheaded all the same.

So lightheaded in fact that it took him a minute to compute what she had quietly whispered into his ear before removing herself from his embrace.

"It's too late."

And the last words to him that he heard from her as he was falling to the couch and watching her twist off the ring that must have injected the poison as she held his hand so tightly was: "I love you, Will, too much to watch you pay for my mistakes as well. Goodbye."

And then just as everything was fading to black, he heard her say, "Take him to Storybrooke, Rabbit."

~0~

"And so because she was unhappy at your unhappiness, she removed the source of her misery instead of working with you to remove yours," Dru summed up quite succinctly and with barely concealed disbelief.

"Yep."

"My little sister is one twisted bint, even when she is trying to be a noble arse," she commiserated, and although the sentiment was much appreciated, what he even more prized was her order for the bartender to bring him over something much stronger.

And that she sat with him in companionable silence as he worked to deaden his pain the only way he knew how while he still had a heart in his chest.

~0~

 _Sometime after Emma Swan's sacrifice..._

"You look like you could use a drink," was how Drusilla greeted him as he entered the Rabbit Hole.

If he was wanting to seek solace from a bottle in peace, he was going to have to start going to the Ugly Ducking. But instead of turning around and walking out the door (he was already here), he plopped onto the seat next to her and acknowledged morosely, "Or two."

Dru eyed him speculatively, before knowingly remarking, "So I take it your rebound has bid you adieu?"

"Rebound?" he snorted in disbelief. The pain of Belle's unceremonious dumping of him hurt more than what the word implied it should. "Is that what we were?"

Dru rolled her eyes exasperatedly, "Please, two recently broken-hearts finding solace in one another? What else do you call it?"

"I dunno. Doomed? I did try to come betwixt Beauty and her Beast."

She was having none of his self-pity this time. Over the rim of his glass, he could see her grimace in disgust, as she protested, "Oh so you've drank the town's Kool-aide too, huh?"

"About True Love? It's kinda hard not to when you've got Prince Charming and Snow White living their Happily-Ever-After as Mayor and Sheriff. How can you not?" he asked incredulously.

"Oh, I do," she waved his amazement away dismissively, as she explained. "I just don't believe it's Destiny or Fate. True Love is a relationship filled with choices, of intentionally choosing the other, choosing 'them', and choosing to sacrifice or to turn away from the easier path."

He wondered if her definition had anything to do with the fact that Ana had done none of these things with him.

She seemed oblivious to his emotional turmoil, as she continued with a derisive sneer, "Belle is not fated for Gold. She's just an idiot for continuing to choose him, thinking that she can change him by staying. He can only change if he wants to, and as long as he is 'the Dark One', he will never want to."

"Well, if rumors are true, he's not anymore."

They both drifted into momentary silence as they contemplated the gravity of the situation of the Savior being swallowed by the Darkness. It certainly put his dumping into perspective.

After that moment though, he shook it off. The She-Sheriff's fate was a dilemma for another day, and hopefully not his.

Instead, he found himself asking, "When did you become so wise?"

(He could have sworn this was the shallow, self-absorbed Drusilla he was talking to, and while her morning show got 'classier', it certainly hadn't gotten philosophical.)

Dru shrugged, "Something from my sessions with Dr. Hopper had to have stuck."

"Anything else?" he prompted, curious despite his usual apathetic self.

She didn't reply right away, and so he nursed his ale in peace while she took her time to contemplate before answering.

Eventually though, she did, coming up with: "Happiness is not dependent upon finding that special someone. For if you can't experience joy or contentment when alone, how can you expect an equally flawed person to consistently make that happen for you? Especially when the shit hits the fan as it happens to do in this thrice – quadrupled? – Cursed town?

That was all some heady bit of stuff, and none of which he was eager to touch upon, so instead, he raised his eyebrows and snidely asked, "The do-gooder Cricket said all that?"

She again shrugged, this time more sheepishly as she confessed, "I may have paraphrased a bit." And then turning to lean against the bar, Drusilla the Philosopher scanned the Rabbit Hole's increased number of patrons, before adding in a far more mischievous tone, "One lesson I took most to heart was the importance of living in the moment."

"Oh, yeah?" he challenged.

"Yep," she replied, popping the 'p' as she slowly smirked, "And right now, I am going to thoroughly enjoy welcoming the newbies into the modern era."

Will followed her gaze and saw the crowd from Phillip's and Aurora's entourage quizzically eyeing the menus and shooting wary gazes at the jukebox, which was blaring some pop monstrosity.

When Dru looked back at him, he saw a twinkle or two of mischief in her dark eyes and an impish smirk flirting at the corners of her mouth, and he just knew that his life was never going to be the same again.

"So what _exactly_ are you proposing? Are we gonna introduce them to karaoke?"

"Oh no! We're not going to overwhelm the babes." At his again raised eyebrows, she elaborated, "We're going to introduce them to the classic 'Oh my God, it's the end-of-the-world-again – (especially now that the Savior is the Dark One) – let's-drink-the-bar-dry ritual."

"On their tab?"

"Duh," she retorted as she dramatically rolled her eyes.

When he didn't say anything and just kept staring at this saucy little minx like a stupefied idiot, knowing that he had just found his basket-to-hell buddy, she began to squirm on her barstool and asked concernedly, "Will?"

"I think I am having a _Casablanca_ moment."

It took her a moment to get his cinematic reference, but then the peek-a-boo smirk she had worn earlier became a full blown Cheshire grin as she tapped her shot glass against his pint and rejoined, "As long as I'm Rick to your Louie, you go right ahead, kid."

Fine by him. The short corrupt Frenchman didn't get jilted for the husband. He could do without that happening again.

She hopped off her stool and crooked out her elbow for him to loop his arm through, asking, "Shall we?"

He finished his pint and linked arms with her, feeling a million pounds lighter than when he first walked into the bar, as he declared, "Here's to living in the bloody moment, my friend."

~0~

To Brokenheats.

To Rebounds.

To Hell-basket buddies and back again.

To screwing 'Destiny' and painful pasts.

To _Carpe_ bloody _diem._

To What Could Be…

These are the building blocks

Of _our_ beautiful friendship.

Cheers.


End file.
